Indigenous Knowledges Minor Review: A Review of Indigenous Knowledges Minor at an Australian University

Teaching Indigenous Knowledges through critical Indigenous Studies is an intellectually stimulating endeavour, as Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators and students negotiate the tensions at the cultural interface of knowledge production, explore new possibilities for Indigenous knowledge and perspectives as a field of study with interdisciplinary purpose and relevance. This endeavour requires theoretical perspectives (Indigenous Australian and international) and agency that transforms students into informed citizens. Conceptual tools such as critical race theory, whiteness, cultural theories, and decolonisation among others, equip students to question, imagine and envision to create a socially just society that values the importance of Indigenous presence and its contribution to the Australia’s national narrative. Students’ proactive engagement in the IKM draws on some basic principles including the presence and privileging of Indigenous voices and narrative through scholarship and connections to place and space (Country). The leadership of Indigenous scholars and academics who model praxis through Indigenous standpoints and lived experiences is crucial. Moreover, recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders peoples and communities as holders of knowledge value-add book knowledge in this field of study. Learning from place and context through community engagements on and off campus, partnerships and co-designed projects and initiatives are to be encouraged and supported. Place holds significant learning opportunities (Graham, 2009), and offers the balances between Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing. With its Minor status within the university-wide program structure, the overlapping nature of Indigenous knowledges within interdisciplinary structures, the non-linear progression of study patterns and irregular patterns of enrolment obscure a linear curricula design. Instead, the IKM is designed from a framework which accommodates established theoretical frameworks and experiential knowledge, and commands pedagogical expertise and astuteness. As an interdisciplinary field of study, teaching Indigenous knowledge through critical Indigenous Studies is both challenging, unsettling and intellectually invigorating. Decolonising mindsets and challenging epistemological violence remain central to the IKM project. Decolonisation is a process, cultivated through Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Terms of Reference and epistemological rigour and pedagogical approaches. Aboriginal wisdom shared in this Review posit that achieving some degree of decolonisation by engaging students to examine their own held knowledges of Indigenous community through critical frameworks and standpoints, exposure to Indigenous conditions and the generation of their own critical self-awareness either through self-reflections or academic research is only the beginning of lifelong projects.

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